The Alpha’s Hidden Queen

Chapter2

The servants’ quarters smelled like soap and smoke.

I stood in the doorway of a narrow room with two cots, a chipped basin, and a single window too high to see anything but thesky. The guard who’d dragged me here hadn’t bothered with an introduction. He just shoved a gray dress into my arms and left.

I sat on the edge of the cot and stared at my hands until they stopped shaking.

“You’re the new one.”

I startled so hard I nearly fell off the cot. A girl stood in the doorway, dark hair braided back, an armful of folded linens balanced against her hip. She had a soft, open face, the kind that looked like it could t hide any lies or secrets.

“Mira,” she said, setting the linens down. “I do the west wing. You’re east, I heard. Poor thing.”

“Why poor thing?”

“Because that’s his wing.” She said it like it explained everything, and I understood whose it was without needing to ask. “You’ll want to learn where the floorboards creak before he does. For example, the third one past the library door — skip it, or he’ll hear you coming from two rooms away and it’ll put him in a mood.”

“Is he ever not in a mood?”

Mira laughed, quiet and quick, like she wasn’t used to being allowed to. “Rarely. But he’s fair, if you don’t give him a reason not to be. Just don’t talk back. Don’t look him in the eye too long. And whatever you do, don’t spill anything near the wine cellar. Rule number one, learned the hard way.”

“What happened with rule number one?”

“The girl before you, she broke a bottle of some really really old wine, older than both of us combined. He didn’t touch her, if that’s what you’re wondering, he’s never once laid a hand on any of us like that, whatever the rumors say. But he had her scrubbing that cellar floor on her knees until sunrise, and made sure everyone in the house heard about it. Public lessons. That’s how he teaches.”

Mira shrugged, like this was simply weather to be planned around rather than cruelty to be feared. “He’s not the worst Alpha I’ve served under. That’s the strange thing about this house. Everyone expects a monster and gets something colder and stranger instead.”

“Stranger how?”

“He doesn’t waste cruelty,” she said, after a pause, like she was choosing the words carefully. “Never once seen him do something ugly just because he could. Everything he does, he does on purpose. I don’t know if that makes him better or worse than the alternative. Just — different than what you’re expecting, probably.”

I turned that over long after she left. Different than what you’re expecting. I’d expected a monster. Some small, treacherous part of me was already searching his face for proof he wasn’t one, and I hated that part of myself more than I’d ever hated anything the Ravenswoods had taken from me.

She sat beside me and offered half a piece of bread from her apron pocket like it was nothing, like sharing food with a stranger covered in chain-bruises was the most natural thing in the world.

I took it. My hands were shaking again, but for a different reason this time.

“Thank you,” I said, and meant it more than she could know.

“Don’t thank me yet,” Mira said. “This house eats kind people for breakfast. But I’ll look out for you where I can.”

I wanted to believe her. Some starved, exhausted part of me did believe her, immediately and completely, the way you believe the first warm thing you’re offered after days of cold nights in the desert.

°•~•°°•~•°°•~•°

On my second morning there, I wandered the compound and found a wolf pacing the edge of the training yard. It’s eyes were wild and hackless in a way that read danger. The guards were clearly struggling to keep control as they kept their distance with spears half-raised.

I don’t know what made me walk toward it instead of away.

“Hey,” I said, voice low, like I was speaking to a puppy and not a several hundred pound predator. “Hey, it’s alright.”

“Get back,” one of the guards hissed.

I ignored him. Instead, I crouched down keeping my palms open, and my voice steady and soft in the hopes of soothing the creature. It all came natural to me like instinct and I just went with it.

The wolf’s ears flattened against my palm. And then, it went still.

“There,” I murmured. “There you go.”

By the time I’d fully calmed it and it padded off toward the treeline, I realized every guard in the yard was staring at me.

“How’d you do that?” one asked, half-impressed.

“Lucky guess,” I said, and forced myself to walk away before my hands could betray me.

I didn’t notice Bastian watching from the shadow of the armory until I was nearly past him. Kael’s beta. His arms were crossed, eyes sharp, expression unreadable.

“That wasn’t luck,” he said quietly, as I passed.

I didn’t answer. I kept walking, and I didn’t look back, but I felt his eyes on me the whole way across the yard, trying to assess something he wasn’t sure whether to be weary of yet.

I thought that was that until he approached me by the well an hour later.

“Where’d you learn to do that?” Bastian asked directly. He wasn’t the kind of man who wasted words warming up to a question.

“Learn what?”

“Don’t.” His voice was precise, like he was cutting straight to the center of a lie and didn’t see the point in pretending otherwise. “I’ve handled spooked and wild wolves my whole life. Trained handlers carry scars for attempting less than what you did in thirty seconds with nothing but your bare hands and a soft voice. So I’ll ask again. Where’d you learn that?”

“I don’t know,” I said, and it was half true. “I’ve always been good with animals.”

“That wasn’t just an animal. That was a wolf mid-panic, ready to tear into the first thing that moved. You didn’t calm a dog.” He studied me the way I imagined he studied an enemy for weak points. But I knew he wouldn't find any, not on me. “Where are you from?”

“Does it matter?”

“You speak with a lot of audacity for a lowly maid… Fen.”

I made myself hold his gaze, even though every instinct screamed to look away, to shrink, to become the nothing I’d trained myself to be. “I’m nobody, sir. Just a maid who got lucky with a scared animal. I’d rather you didn’t make it into more than that.”

Something shifted behind his eyes. I knew then that he didn't believe me but he'd at least let things be… for now. “Be careful who else you get lucky in front of,” he said finally. “Not everyone here will let it go as easily as I just did.”

Was that just a warning, or a threat that hed always be watching now? I wasn't sure. He walked away before I could decide. Maybe, I thought, watching his back retreat toward the armory, it had been both.

He wasn’t finished with me. I should have known.

Bastian found me again the next day by the corridor outside the kitchens, blocking the path. I could tell he'd been waiting patiently for however long.

“One more question,” he said.

“I answered your questions this yesterday”

“No. You avoided them. There’s a difference, and I think you know it.” He crossed his arms, studying me with an intensity that made my skin prickle. “Kael doesn't concern himself enough with things he should. That's why he has me, it’s my job to notice things he’s too busy to notice himself. So I’ll ask you plainly — should he be worried about you?”

The question landed harder than I expected. Should he be worried about me? As if I were the danger in this house, and not the weak prey.

“No,” I said, and made myself believe it as I said it, the way I’d trained myself to believe every lie that kept me breathing. “I just want to survive here, Bastian. That’s all. I’m not a threat to anyone who doesn’t threaten me first.”

His expression shifted, then he answered “See that it stays that way,” he said. “For your sake.”

He let me pass. But I could still feel his eyes on my back the entire length of the corridor, and I held my breath until I’d turned the corner out of his sight.

So much for laying low.